Grandmaster-level chess without search

OT: what's the state of the art in non-GM level computer chess?

Say I want to play chess with an opponent that is at about the same skill level as me, or perhaps I want to play with an opponent about 100 rating points above me for training.

Most engines let you dumb them down by cutting search depth, but that usually doesn't work well. Sure, you end up beating them about half the time if you cut the search down enough but it generally feels like they were still outplaying you for much of the game and you won because they made one or two blunders.

What I want is a computer opponent that plays at a level of my choosing but plays a game that feels like that of a typical human player of that level.

Are there such engines?

I built something like this. It works as long as you're not too high-rated: chessmate.ai. Once players get higher rated it is more difficult to predict their moves because you need to model their search process, not just their intuitive move choice. It's also possible to train on one player's games only so that it is more personalized.

It uses a similar approach to Maia but with a different neural network, so it had a bit better move matching performance. And on top of that it has an expectation maximization algorithm so that the bot will try to exploit your mistakes.